iPhone: An International Sensation?

Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on September 18, 2007

It’s been pretty hard to miss the news that Apple has got the ball rolling on plans to launch the iPhone in the UK with Telefonica’s O2 as its carrier partner. Here’s the basics: It will sell for 269 pounds or about $535, with service plans ranging from 35 to 55 pounds, and a contract length of 18 months. The difference in price is the result of higher distribution costs and taxation in the UK. It will launch on Nov. 9. Rumors are running hot and heavy that Orange will be the partner in France and T-Mobile in Germany.

Again the usual critiques are being heard: Its still an EDGE phone and not 3G. Asked at that the press event in London, Steve Jobs says the battery life with the 3G chipsets just isn’t there, and that they reduce talk time to 2-3 hours vs. the 8 hours on the iPhone now. On the WiFi front O2 worked out an agreement with an outfit called Cloud for free WiFi access on 7,000 hot spots around the UK.

There are some reports about a revenue-sharing agreement between O2 and Apple, that would have O2 sending as much as 40% of the revenue to Apple. Both Jobs and O2 CEO Matthew Key declined to answer any questions on that.

My colleague in London checked in with Martin Garner, an analyst at Ovum, a telecom consultancy, who says that the launch of the iPhone has “galvanized” the rival phone manufacturer to update their phone interfacesm and that given its head start, it will take the others about a year to catch up.

But it’s not going to be a perfectly smooth launch either. O2’s network Garner says will need to be upgraded to accommodated the EDGE technology, and right now only about 30% of its network is ready. It’s also going to have to bear the cost of having 1,000 employees geared specifically to the iPhone lauch. That’s going to cost. The key is going to be gauging interest. There will be the usual cachet associated with being the first on the block with hype-heavy product of the moment. He expects the UK to mimic the US market. Update: Reader David helpfully points out that the wireless provider is O2, not 02 as I had it previously.

Meanwhile, there’s still another country being neglected by the Apple and iPhone: Canada. Fake Steve Jobs (aka Daniel Lyons) had YouTube clip up the other day on that topic. Not sure what would motivate anyone to use puppets to air this complaint, but whoever created it sure went to a lot of trouble.

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